Volcanologist
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Being treated by Unspeakable Malfoy for a curse that's slowly turning him into stone, having Malfoy see into his mind with telepathic magic and seeing into Malfoy's mind in return, shows Harry something he's looked for a long time—and never imagined finding here. Twoshot. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Volcanologist

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairing:** Harry/Draco, mentions of past Harry/others and Draco/others

 **Warnings:** Angst, Dark magic, jealousy, obsession

 **Rating:** R

 **Wordcount:** This part 4200

 **Summary:** Being treated by Unspeakable Malfoy for a curse that's slowly turning him into stone, having Malfoy see into his mind with telepathic magic and seeing into Malfoy's mind in return, shows Harry something he's looked for a long time—and never imagined finding here.

 **Author's Notes:** An Advent fic for enamoril, who asked for Harry/Draco and gave me the following prompt: _Auror Harry is brought to the Department of Mysteries, to lay naked on Unseen Malfoy's examination table. He is suffering from an ancient curse that resulted from a peculiar pumpkin being thrown at his face in battle, and now he's covered in black etched curse marks, unable to move and slowly turning to stone. Malfoy, with his qualifications of telepathic communication magic and experience with such artifacts, is elected to help him. Oh and Harry finds out really quickly from contact with Malfoy's mind that Malfoy is, 1. An arsehole still after all these years, with extra bitterness on top, and 2. Fairly obsessed with him, to the point that Harry knew that Malfoy enjoyed seeing him naked, and that only decency -that he didn't know Malfoy had- kept him from toying with his body as he examined him. Also I'd love it if Harry wasn't with Ginny, kids from the divorce/no kids optional, and if Draco and Harry would have mental conversations over some of Harry's scars._ This will be a two-shot.

 **Volcanologist**

"Put him down there—yes, there, be _careful_ , I don't think you can break his arms but we don't want to try it—"

Harry lay there and listened as the Unspeakables rustled and clucked all around him like chickens in grey cloaks, partially because he had no choice. His feet were already stone, and the curse marks were climbing his legs, stiffening the skin. The Unspeakables had cast some spells they hoped would slow the progress of the curse. Unfortunately, that meant Harry had all his senses but was naked and essentially paralyzed.

"When is Unspeakable Malfoy going to get here?"

Harry wanted to close his eyes and grimace, but his eyes were held still, too. At least the Unspeakables had cast a spell that followed him around as a tiny raincloud, regularly shedding moisture on his eyeballs so they wouldn't dry out.

He wasn't sure if he should be agitated or not that they so obviously knew how to deal with paralyzed people.

"A few minutes. He has some research project that he needs to pack up first. Something about the telepathic mice not getting out."

"Of course he has that," said the Unspeakable nearest Harry's head, a woman named Marta Tromaine who had cast the raincloud. Harry was reassured that at least one of Malfoy's colleagues seemed to share Harry's opinion of him. "He _always_ has things like that, you ought to listen to him go on why he can never come to any of the meetings with other Departments—"

Harry got distracted as he felt another surge climbing his legs past his knees. The curse marks had stretched up, and Tromaine was distracted herself. She swore, and Harry heard her casting some spells he didn't know on Harry's legs.

"Where _is_ he?"

"Here, Marta. Had I know how much you _wanted_ me, I would have hurried some more."

Harry would have shuddered if he could. Malfoy's voice sounded exactly the way it always had, as if someone had taken posh arrogance and Galleons and distilled them into a sound. Too bad Harry couldn't close his eyes, either.

Malfoy loomed over him briefly. Harry caught only a glimpse of blond hair and a pointy face before Tromaine's raincloud functioned again and covered his eyes with a soft, blurry wet film. Harry struggled badly to blink. Nothing doing, though.

"Good thinking with the cloud," said Malfoy in a distant-sounding voice. "Time of curse? Vehicle of delivery?"

"Enchanted pumpkin. An hour ago."

"Good thinking to get him this far, this fast." Malfoy's fingers skimmed down Harry's hips, and Harry wanted to squirm. It was only in his feet that he'd utterly lost sensation, and he knew he shouldn't wish he'd lost more, because that would mean the curse had succeeded in turning more of him to stone. "I recognize the curse marks. But I'll need contact with his mind to start reversing it. Which means no one in here."

"I was hoping that you'd consent to letting Apprentice Zissleer stay. You know she wants to see how it's done, and—"

"Not this time. It'll be a delicate operation, and the fewer people I have around disturbing me, the better."

The other Unspeakables sounded like they were leaving. Harry lay there and wondered what he would say if he could. _Don't leave me here with him? Even if he's the only one who can save me?_

But they must have some _reason_ for believing that Malfoy was actually competent, instead of likely to destroy him. Harry hoped that that belief was right, and he wasn't a sacrifice to an Unspeakable's sense of rightness to a colleague.

"Harry Potter."

Harry wished his hair could still stand straight up, because that voice was creepy. Malfoy smoothed a hand over his shoulder, and that was creepy, too, because the curse-marks hadn't crept that high. He ought to be looking at Harry's legs and feet first. Harry didn't even know if his feet were recoverable.

He thought of the wooden leg Mad-Eye Moody had had, and once again he wanted to shudder.

"If I had known that I would have the chance to treat you today, I would have woken up in a better mood this morning."

 _Does that mean he isn't going to torture me?_ Harry had no idea. It might just mean that Malfoy thought he could get enough fame and prestige from treating Harry to make up for any aggravation.

Malfoy moved back and did finally take a glance at his legs and ankles. Harry could see a shadow of blond hair out of the corner of his eye, but since the paralysis had left him flat on his back, his field of vision was mostly aimed at the ceiling.

"Hmm."

Malfoy reached down and slid a hand along Harry's legs, up to the knees and then back down. Once again Harry badly wanted to twitch. The touch was as creepy, in its own way, as the advancing curse-marks. Malfoy wasn't carving up his skin, but he _could_ , and Harry wouldn't be able to prevent him.

He was going to go home when this was done—Harry didn't let himself consider at the moment that Malfoy might not be able to stop the curse and he would become a statue—and take a hot shower for every moment he had wanted to twitch or shudder or fend off someone's touch.

"Yes, I think I see what I need to do."

Malfoy moved away from the bed. Harry automatically tried to twist his head to see after him, and couldn't. Plus, even if Malfoy had been standing right above him at the moment with his tools in hand, Tromaine's raincloud chose that second to soak his eyes, so Harry wouldn't have been able to see it well anyway.

And then Malfoy came back and _did_ stand right above him with his tools in hand. He had a blue stone dish balanced in the center of his palm. His voice was soft and whispery, moving in and out of the words and pauses of a chant Harry didn't know. He laid down the bowl to the left of Harry's head and strung a piece of cord from it over Harry's face to something on the other side, on the right.

Then he began to move around him, waving something that looked thicker like a wand. An athame? Harry almost hoped so. The wizards he and the other Aurors had been after, before one of them had thrown that bloody pumpkin at him and cursed him with this, had used one in their rituals. Maybe using one now could undo the curse.

Malfoy's voice built and built up, and suddenly he tossed the athame into the air so it arched over Harry's face. Harry had the chance to check and make sure that, yes, it _was_ one and at the same time scream internally and try to flinch and flinch hard. If that thing came down and stabbed out an eye…

But it didn't. It hung there, radiating a black seven-pointed star, and drew Harry's gaze. He found himself thinking of the seven pieces of soul, seven Horcruxes, and whether this was some of the same magic that Voldemort had studied in order to make them.

 _How ridiculous you are, Potter. What could combating a curse that's turning your body to stone have to do with the soul?_

Harry wanted to give another tremendous start. Hadn't the Unspeakables said something about telepathic magic…?

 _They did. It's one of my specialties. I need you to cooperate with me to turn back the curse, but at the same time, I can't have you thrashing around and upsetting the cords I'll need to place on your body. This paralysis combined with the telepathic magic is our best bet._

Harry tried to calm down his racing thoughts and make what he thought next an actual response to Malfoy's question, instead of just a stray question that Malfoy picked up and decided to respond to. _How can I help you if I still have to lie here paralyzed?_

 _Because this is action done in the mind, of course._

 _You still think I'm an idiot._

 _No_ shit, _Potter. You could have the softest and most pleasant life you imagined, and live for years off the gifts that the grateful British wizarding public gave you. But do_ you _do that? No, of course not. You have to spend most of your time pursuing Dark wizards, and endangering your life, and getting yourself paralyzed._

 _I never wanted the kind of life you're talking about!_

 _I know, but that's only because you're an idiot_.

Harry wanted to argue back, but Malfoy moved a little, and drew another cord down from the floating athame across Harry's body. Harry couldn't feel where he put it. He hoped, desperately, that that meant Malfoy had attached it to his feet and not that some other part of his body had lost sensation.

 _You could ask me. Yes, it's attached to your big toe on your right foot. The person who created this curse had to enchant the pumpkin in the middle of a ritual design. I need to replicate that design on your body._

There was a long moment when Harry listened to his stupid breathing, which was only going on enough to keep him alive and not enough to let him express his panic, and then Malfoy whispered to him, in a crooning tone that reminded Harry of the basilisk, _Such a nice body_.

Harry wanted to whip his head around and stare at him, but of course he couldn't. _What do you mean? I—Malfoy, this is ridiculous._

 _I agree._ Malfoy's voice snapped like a window being broken. _If the world made sense, which means that if the world ordered itself to my specifications, then you would have noticed the bloody obvious staring you in the face and tried to date me during that last year we spent at Hogwarts. Instead of ignoring me and going for Weasley._

 _Ginny and I have been divorced for a long time now,_ Harry said absently. _And Malfoy, you can't admire me._

The mental laughter that cut through Harry's head made him wince and want to hide. _But you don't get to tell me what to do, Potter. I won freedom from your strictures a long time ago, by entering the Unspeakables. And you have to put up, for now, with the knowledge that I'd like to see you get hard for me, and touch you when you couldn't fight back._

Harry's strongest desire right now was to gape, and he could feel Malfoy's amusement, like a winter wind whipping particles of ice in his face. In the meantime, he was stretching another cord across Harry's body, this time from one frozen arm to the other, and now and then pausing to murmur more incantations in that windy language Harry didn't know.

 _You can stop the curse,_ Harry said at last.

 _Not without your cooperation_. Malfoy came to the head of the table and leaned over so that his eyes were locked on Harry's. _And to do that, you need to look into the deepest part of my brain and join me on the ritual board I have laid out there._

 _Ritual…board?_

But a second later, with a flash like the athame and the sensation of passing through a doorway, Harry was in that place, and he could see why Malfoy had called it a board.

It had alternating squares of color, like a chessboard, but these weren't black and white. They were deep purple and green, instead. Harry blinked and looked around, and then froze in pure joy, because he _could_ do that.

 _So when you have the chance to move, you waste it on freezing? Potter, you're an idiot._

Harry ignored him, and ran his hands up and down his hips. He could move. He could blink and speak. He was alive.

 _You might not be for much longer unless you pay attention to me._

Harry looked up, with a sudden snapping sensation claiming his attention. Malfoy stood now on the other side of the board, on a purple square. He wore grey Unspeakable robes and studied Harry with devouring intensity.

Harry looked down again, and something came to him consciously then that had been true all along, but easier to ignore until now. He was still naked. His face turned scarlet.

 _You could have brought me here in clothes._

 _Why should I do that, when I enjoy looking at you so much?_

Harry glared furiously. Malfoy gave him a bland smile that had sharp edges. It would only seem that way when coupled with Malfoy's voice in your head, though, thought Harry.

 _Your mother was Professor Snape's downfall. His obsession. He told me once that he thought of her each time he went to sleep, almost twenty years after her death. And while you haven't lasted as long for me, I understand what he meant. You're always there, Potter. When I'm doing experiments. When I'm performing the monthly rituals that Unspeakables must do to look objectively at their mistakes. My greatest fault and folly is always you._

 _I didn't ask to be,_ was all Harry could think to say. _And why would you care that much about me, anyway?_

 _For so many reasons._

The reasons hit Harry like a winter storm in their turn. Wounded pride from Harry's words on the train that first year. All the times Harry had defended Ron or Hermione against Malfoy's taunts. The way Harry flew, and made winning Quidditch look so effortless, and defeated Malfoy time and again. The deeds, like slaying the basilisk, that Malfoy heard about second-hand, and which made him ache and sneak off to his bed to wank.

 _Malfoy! You were bloody_ twelve.

 _Thirteen, then. And some of us know what we want early on. Whether that increases our chances of getting it…_

Harry had to turn away from the worked pain on Malfoy's face. _What do we have to do to hold back the curse?_

Malfoy was silent for a moment, as if he was still waiting for Harry to pay attention to him. Harry was about to snap that he couldn't do that, and then Malfoy's voice came again.

 _The purple squares of the board represent the curse trying to consume you. You probably didn't notice, but the "black" runes appearing on you are actually deep purple. The green squares represent your life. Your eyes._

 _Could something not be about my bloody eyes for once?_

Malfoy ignored that. _You must move with me. From one side of the board to the other. You can think of it any way you want. Playing chess, or dancing, or fighting. But we must make all the purple squares green._ He held out his hand.

Harry huffed in an annoyed breath and held out his hand, too. _It'll have to be dancing. I can't fight you now, no matter how obnoxious you are. And I was never any good at chess._

Malfoy smiled at him and tossed his head back with an oddly joyous gesture. _Fine. But that dance will be conducted my way._

The board around them flickered, and Harry thought for a second he saw the cords that Malfoy had tied around his physical body. He opened his mouth, or his mind, to ask what was happening in the real world, whether the curse had succeeded in climbing his body further than his ankles or not.

But Malfoy hit him with a question. _Where did you come by the scar on the back of your hand?_

Harry grimaced as the question seemed to swirl around him, turning him in a slow clockwise direction. This was what Malfoy had meant by dancing, then. He was going to hit Harry with question after question, including ones that he probably didn't want to answer, and Harry would have to move in the way they wanted him to move.

But Harry wanted to be free and alive more than he wanted to preserve his secrets from Malfoy, so he answered. _Umbridge making me write with a blood quill in her detentions. I believe you were aware of that at the time._

He completed the slow turn, and saw one square turn green. Malfoy apparently still hovered beside him; it was suddenly hard to see him, although Harry could still move. He had gone transparent and shifty, a ghost with a glowing green center.

 _Not that one. The one that stretches across the back of your knuckles on your left hand._

Harry had to look down, because he honestly didn't know what Malfoy was talking about. And even when he saw it—it was a faint white line, the sort of thing that only someone obsessive would notice, _honestly_ —it took him long seconds to recall. Malfoy could presumably tell that Harry was actually struggling with the answer and not just holding back out of pure contrariness, because he was silent.

 _My cousin Dudley scored me with a knife,_ Harry said at last. _I think he had the knife from one of my friends. I never asked. And then someone came out of a house and saw us and yelled, so he didn't get the chance to do anything else with it._ It was one of the few times that Dudley had ever got in trouble, although of course Harry had suffered more when he went back to the Dursleys.

 _And no one tried to stop him?_

 _Of course._ I _did._

 _I meant someone outside you._

Harry only shook his head. They were still slowly turning, Malfoy flickering in and out of reality around that steady green fire at the center of him, and Harry had no idea how fast things were moving in the outside world. _No. Ask your next question._

 _How is it that no one has ever noticed you were abused? Your stature. The way you move, sometimes. The way you came back skinny and pale from a summer at the Muggles'._

Harry felt the impulse to deny it, but he held still. Something else was moving in him, something that had nothing to do with the dance that he and Malfoy were still, he supposed, performing to throw the curse off him.

It was a soft uncurling of pleasure, as deep purple as the squares of the board beneath his feet—no, deeper. This was simple darkness. Dark, like Dark Arts.

Harry was pleased that someone had asked.

He ignored the strange emotion for now and answered, _My friends knew. They saw some things that I wouldn't have been able to lie to them about even if I'd wanted to. And Dumbledore apologized once for condemning me to ten dark and difficult years. He probably didn't know everything about it, but he knew a lot._

 _And nothing ever changed. No one ever tried to get you out of there!_

The snarl reverberated in Harry's head. He also had the impression that it made them spin harder.

He stretched in that unaccustomed, unexplained pleasure and answered. _Dumbledore said it was the safest place for me—safest from Death Eaters. And my friends were only kids. What could they have done?_

 _Don't give me that!_

Malfoy's voice slammed into him like a javelin. Harry gasped and staggered. Malfoy immediately caught him up with—something, maybe arms made of green flame, which was all he looked like now—and held him steady. They began turning again, and Harry saw some more squares on the board turn green.

 _I apologize. I didn't mean to throw you off-balance._

Harry luxuriated in the apology for a minute, too, before Malfoy continued, _They went with you first year and helped you get the Philosopher's Stone. Granger time-traveled with you and saved Buckbeak. They survived a battle with Death Eaters in our fifth year. I can see that they hunted Horcruxes with you._

Harry felt a brief flash of panic. If Malfoy could see all that, things Harry knew he hadn't known, then he could also see what Harry was feeling now, and guess—

But Malfoy went on as though nothing had been said, or sensed, at least by him. _Children who could do that could have done their part in saving you._

 _Because I never asked for it._

 _You damn well should have._

This wasn't like a javelin, this time, It was simple anger, and Harry held onto it, cradled it against him, and he knew why. He knew Malfoy would see that, too. He supposed that was payment enough for the fact that he'd learned of Malfoy's obsession.

Harry wanted someone to care about him. Just him, just the boy or the Auror or the man—Harry didn't much care which of his selves they saw, since to some extent they were all him. But not the Chosen One. Not the hero.

None of his past lovers had ever managed to do that, or at least not much. They'd cared, of course, but Harry's own mythology blinded them at this point. There was no way to get _behind_ that mythology and see the Hero as the Victim. Harry had wanted to have more than a give-and-take relationship with his lovers, or one where he had to do all the giving. Sometimes he wanted to lie back and take and _take_ from someone who wanted nothing more than to give.

 _And I have something I want to give you._

Malfoy's voice was everywhere around him, burning, stinging, lashing. Harry opened his eyes from the middle of a lightning storm and locked them with Malfoy's.

Malfoy came one step towards him. For a second, Harry panicked, thinking they'd broken the spiral of the dance.

And then he saw that beneath their feet, all the squares of the board were green. He relaxed with an incredulous sigh.

 _Yes, you did it. We did it._

Malfoy came up to him then, and Harry felt the darting flicker of his fingers, the mind that sliced and sluiced around his, and he leaned in and kissed Malfoy and he felt as though he had slammed back through a doorway into his body—

 _Finite Incantatem._

Harry thought the spell was telepathic, but when he opened his eyes, he could still move his limbs. He sat up immediately and stared at his ankles. The runes were gone, and he had feet made of flesh again. He flexed them, sighing so hard that it hurt his nostrils.

Something seized his chin and twisted his face around.

"The first thing you should have looked at when you woke up is _me_ ," Malfoy snarled, and kissed him hard enough to drive Harry's lips into his teeth and make both of them ache.

Harry leaned back, a little cry rising from him. He couldn't understand all the emotions leaping in him, lava-like and exploding, and he suspected Malfoy didn't, either, since they were no longer connected by the enforced telepathic bond of the magic. But it might not matter, as Malfoy dropped a knee on the bed and kissed Harry harder and harder.

Someone knocked, far away. Malfoy sat up and turned around.

"I have to tell them we succeeded and you're alive, you'll live," Malfoy said, panting. He swirled his fairly long pale hair back behind him and gave Harry a look that pinned him to the bed and made his cock begin to stir. "But this continues tonight, do you understand?"

Harry nodded hastily, rapidly, then stopped himself before he could look like an idiot or magical toy. Malfoy grinned hard at him once, and slipped away, after conjuring a blanket that he draped over Harry.

Harry leaned back among the broken cords Malfoy had cast over him and closed his eyes. His lips felt dry, his mouth wet.

And his groin hard.

He listened to the distant murmur of Malfoy conversing with the other Unspeakables, and sighed out one, long hard sigh.

 _This isn't over yet._


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for the reviews! This story is now complete.

"Did they tell you they caught the bastards who threw that pumpkin at you? It took them forever to set up that ritual, and they had to buy a bunch of special ingredients. It was easy enough to trace the ingredients to Knockturn Alley."

Harry grinned at Ron as they rode the lift up and away from the Department of Mysteries. "I'm surprised the shopkeepers they bought from cooperated that much."

Ron coughed into his fist. "There _might_ have been some persuasion. And description of what would happen if my best mate died. Just a little, you understand."

Harry reached out and laid his hand on Ron's arm. Ron looked at him silently as the lift slowed down.

"Thank you," Harry said. "I _am_ fine, but it's good to know that they won't be doing this to anyone else. And that they were so afraid of me they messed up the rest of their activities just trying to take me out."

Ron gave him a bloodthirsty grin. "Take it as a compliment, mate."

Harry nodded. "I will."

Ron turned around again as they left the lift, staring at Harry with assessing eyes. "You know," he said, "it almost sounded like you meant that."

Harry blinked at him. "I always do…"

But he let his voice trail off as he realized what Ron meant. Before, he would have bristled or been at least a little sarcastic because people thinking he was some kind of hero, or powerful Auror, or anything else scary was just another indication that they didn't know him at all. Harry made a fair share of arrests, but he didn't cripple or kill people. He was just _effective_ , not frightening.

Now, he probably did sound as if he meant it. Having one person who knew the innermost depths of his mind and hadn't turned away did make a lot of difference.

"No," said Ron, "sometimes it sounds like you're putting up grudgingly with people calling you a hero, but you don't like it."

"Well." Harry shrugged. "I'm probably never going to like it, but I think I can put up with a variation on the theme. At least this time it got people captured, instead of just standing around and gaping at me when they think I can't see them."

That made Ron relax and snort. He had no more patience with trainees who thought Auror Potter was "the Great Harry Potter" than Harry did. The days when a new bunch of trainees got brought around for introductions were always trying. "The sound of their jaws dropping gives them away," he agreed, and clapped Harry on the back. "Malfoy wasn't too awful?"

He didn't sound as if he thought Malfoy would be, which meant that maybe Malfoy's arseholishness was a private thing. Harry grinned and tossed off some light answer which he couldn't remember later, but which sent Ron away satisfied.

And in the meantime, Harry could sit in his office and think.

He didn't want to tell his friends about what Malfoy had done to him, for obvious reasons. Hermione would think it was an ethical violation—which it probably was. Ron would be revolted.

But also, it was something just for Harry. He wanted to keep the one person who had seen him for who he really was, and why, to himself for as long as possible. A concerned Ron would be harder to hide that from.

Harry shivered and opened his eyes. There was a pile of papers standing only a few centimeters in front of him. Harry stirred through it, trying to make it look like he was very concerned about the right pieces of paper reaching their proper destinations.

Then he sat back and shook his head. So he couldn't give a convincing performance. So what? He had nearly _died_ earlier that day. That ought to be a reason for a little time off.

And it wasn't like someone would guess, simply from watching him, that he was entertaining thoughts about Malfoy that most of his friends would think he was better off not having. Even communicating with Malfoy couldn't seem suspicious. The man _had_ just saved his life.

Still, even as he wrote out a memo thanking Malfoy and asking about taking him to dinner to celebrate, Harry told himself not to get his hopes up. The Unspeakables were notoriously late for responding to any post, and sometimes never did. And Malfoy might have his own research to occupy him more than Harry did when Harry wasn't right in front of him. Hadn't Unspeakable Tromaine said something about telepathic mice-?

Malfoy's memo shot back to him less than ten minutes after Harry had sent his own.

 _Seven-o'clock. Jacob's at Sunset_.

* * *

Harry slowed a little as he approached Pleasant Alley, the small alley off Diagon that had a—well, a great or a horrible reputation, depending on what you thought about the kinds of things it served and sold. Jacob's at Sunset wasn't far into the alley, a small door set under an even smaller sign with the name and the image of a sun setting behind a hill.

Small, but only until you stopped, held out your wand to check against the wards that made sure you weren't one of the banned potential customers, and then moved through a shimmering curtain of light and beads into the restaurant.

The place was dim, but magic sprang into life around Harry as he came through the door that let him see perfectly. That was another trick, another ward. Jacob's at Sunset was heavy on magic, counteracting the trend of a lot of restaurants in Diagon Alley now to imitate Muggle décor and customs.

A soft-footed server came up to Harry and bowed. He didn't show any surprise at Harry's scar. "Come this way, Mr. Potter. Mr. Malfoy is already waiting."

Harry nodded and followed. Titles didn't matter here, either. Harry wasn't an Auror, and it was possible no one here even knew Malfoy was an Unspeakable.

What mattered were the black walls, and the soft red carpets, and the dim light shed from the enormous fireplaces burning on pure magic, and the interactions at the small ebony tables that each had living black roses blooming in the middle of them.

The table Malfoy was sitting at had a slightly better light than some of the others, thanks to a glowing globe like _Lumos_ caught in the thorns of the roses. Malfoy sat with his cloak flung over the back of the chair, and the chair itself turned sideways so he could sit with his legs extended. He was sipping blue wine that shone like the light from a glass tube. He didn't stand up when Harry came in, but his glance was intent all the same.

"You will speak your orders to the air," the server murmured, and left. Harry didn't nod after him, knowing he wouldn't look over his shoulder. He sat down opposite Malfoy instead.

"You didn't go home to change your robes."

"I didn't want to."

Malfoy looked at him carefully for a second, then sat back. "In what we do, Auror robes make no difference to me."

Harry turned carefully away from the table and said aloud to the air, "Champagne." He turned back and saw Malfoy trying not to stare. Well, so what? Harry didn't know what kind of wine Malfoy was drinking, wasn't sure he would want it if he did, and he felt like celebrating. "I know that. You want me, not the Auror robes."

Malfoy's eyes were dark. Harry hoped he hadn't messed up already. But then Malfoy nodded and sipped from his tube again. "Yes, I do. I just wanted to warn you that if you showed up in Auror robes hoping to gain some sort of psychological advantage over me, it wasn't going to work."

"I didn't do it for that reason," Harry said, and saw the plate with his glass and champagne coming from the corner of his eye. It floated, but didn't bob at all, which was something that was difficult to get right with that spell; it might have been an invisible human being carrying it. Harry took it and turned back to look at Malfoy.

Who nodded, slowly. "Good."

Harry drank his champagne in silence for a little while, and Malfoy drank his wine, or whatever it really was. Harry licked his lips when he was done and sat back to look Malfoy calmly in the eyes. "What is this going to be?"

"Have something to eat first."

Harry heard the snap of the order in his voice, and felt a warmth inside. Malfoy had his own reasons for wanting Harry to eat and be healthy, but it didn't really matter what they were; Harry didn't mind the secrecy.

Someone wanted to care _for_ him. They wouldn't sit around wanting to be rescued the way they thought Harry did with people all the time; they wouldn't whimper and look up at him like puppies; he got to do what he wanted, eat what he wanted, and because someone else had _told_ him to.

It made his stomach fill with a happiness as intense as nausea.

Harry spoke his order for lamb with mint sauce to the air, and it arrived in a few minutes. Malfoy watched him eat with terrible intensity. Harry wondered if he'd had something to eat himself.

He didn't think it mattered, though. Malfoy didn't want him to ask, and Harry didn't need to. He was sure Malfoy wasn't fool enough to drink on an empty stomach, no matter how nervous he was that he might have fantasies coming true.

Harry finished the excellent meal with a little sigh, and Malfoy leaned forwards and started speaking in a voice as soft as the firelight.

"I want to take you home and spend some time staring at you. To see all the scars that I couldn't take in individually because I was too busy setting up the ritual design to stop the curse this morning. To hold you and make you hold still for me."

Harry shuddered, once. There was adrenaline speeding through him. Malfoy probably didn't know it, but he was using sort of the same tone that Dark wizards had, in the past, when they were threatening Harry with something.

Now that the tone was being spoken in the right kind of environment and by someone who didn't want him to die but might want him to suffer, in his own way, Harry wondered if he could ever listen to the threats with inner laughter again.

"And then," Malfoy said, drawing out the words as if he was going to throw them forwards like blades, "I want to fuck you so hard that I'll _hurt_ you."

Harry let his eyes flutter closed. "But you'll be with me."

Malfoy didn't ask the questions that would have marked him as either stupid or too distant from Harry to understand what he wanted. He only nodded and said, "The _entire_ time. The entire time."

"Then we can go as soon as you're ready," Harry said, and reached out to pick up his champagne glass, a test of sorts.

Malfoy forced his hand back to the table. "I'm ready now."

Harry nodded, supplying the unspoken words for himself. _And you'll have to be._

* * *

Malfoy did indeed stare at Harry's uncovered body. The odd thing, Harry thought, as he lay on the bed and felt the staring pass over him, was that no one else had ever looked at him that way before, even the lovers Harry had had who thought he was really handsome. They got distracted by the scar on his forehead and never looked at any of the others.

Malfoy did.

He picked up Harry's right hand and let his tongue follow the path of Harry's messy letters. He traced, over and over again, the scar on Harry's left one that came from the knife Dudley had tried to use on him. He had Harry roll over on his stomach and looked at faded old marks on Harry's back, so old that he could no longer remember exactly which ones had come from which hard beatings by Dudley.

"I wish you could remember more about yourself," Malfoy whispered into his neck. He was moving on top of Harry, gentle movements that could only be called thrusts if Harry felt Malfoy's cock touching his arse. He didn't, actually. Malfoy kept space between them except where his hands gripped Harry's shoulders. "I want to know the origin of every scar, and what you ate for breakfast every morning of your life, and all of your thoughts every day."

Harry moaned slowly back. He was still getting used to this intensity focused on him. He had heard people say things like that before, and they'd frightened him, then.

He thought Malfoy should frighten him if he was being smart. But he didn't feel particularly smart at the moment.

"I want to know you because it means knowing myself," Malfoy whispered. "Even after I became an Unspeakable, some of me was lost and wasted. All those years I spent without contact with you, and all those years I spent doing things I didn't want to do. In service to the Dark Lord. Learning useless things at Hogwarts. I want more than that."

Harry closed his eyes. This time, he had no idea what to respond. He didn't know if he could help Malfoy recover what he'd lost, partially because Malfoy didn't sound as if he knew himself what would count as having it back.

But then Malfoy lowered himself and his body was touching Harry's, his chest pressed to Harry's back, his cock against Harry's arse, his toes on Harry's heels. Harry wriggled and cried out, entirely without meaning to.

"Now I can at least have this," Malfoy whispered. "Have you again and again." He reached out and picked up something from the table next to them. Harry hadn't looked at it closely, but he had seen it was in a flask and had a sort of liquid motion to it. He'd assumed it was lube.

Now Malfoy held it close to his face, and Harry opened his eyes, because not even the lovers he'd had for the shortest time thought he needed lube to help his mouth. It was a potion.

"You're going to drink half of this," Malfoy said, "and I'm going to drink the other half. It'll let us come more than once. In fact, we'll probably have some _trouble_ if we don't keep trying to come."

"Until when?" Harry whispered, his voice hoarse.

"Until sunrise."

Harry reached out with a shaking hand—although mostly because his arm had gone numb with Malfoy lying on top of him—and scooped up the flask. Malfoy watched with a soft laugh as Harry swallowed.

The potion curled into Harry's gut and lit it with a smoldering fire like the ones in Jacob's at Sunset. Harry pivoted over and grabbed Malfoy's arms, pressing the flask into one of his hands.

"Drink it," Harry whispered. "And then fuck me."

* * *

It was incredible.

Harry could feel his heartbeat speeding along, seemingly shaking the bed. That had to be the potion. His heart normally never beat like that, not even when he was naked and paralyzed in the Department of Mysteries with the runes of a curse climbing his body and turning him to stone.

And he had some basis for comparison, now.

Malfoy was fucking him. They fucked with Harry on his hands and knees, Harry's face buried in the pillow sometimes and raised to gasp for air sometimes, and Harry felt his skin starting to burn with the sweat, with the salt in his sweat. Malfoy was swearing at him, but half the time Harry couldn't hear him; he had other things to listen to.

"Fuck you, _fuck_ —"

Malfoy knew how to move. How to thrust sideways sometimes, and sometimes up, and sometimes down, so that Harry was left in silent craziness, trying to anticipate his moves. And he never could. Malfoy swore and urged him on, and Harry thrust against the bed, and reached back and tried to grab Malfoy and push him in faster.

"You're just a means of _satisfying_ myself."

Harry snarled back, "Well, I'm glad that _someone's_ getting satisfied."

That made Malfoy ride him so hard that Harry felt something get sprained in his wrist. His hands gave out beneath him, and he fell face-down on the bed. Malfoy sat up and rearranged himself somehow and began flat-out plowing him, until Harry cried out again and tried to make it sound like a plea for mercy.

Either he wasn't convincing, or Malfoy _had_ drifted away into his own satisfaction and couldn't answer him. Harry managed to glance back once, when he could convince his aching neck to turn against the pain, and saw Malfoy's eyes closed as he bobbed in some world of his own.

When Harry came, that burned, too.

* * *

It was exciting.

Sure enough, the potion had given them back their erections within a few minutes of both of them finishing. Malfoy had immediately turned Harry over and told him to stretch his arms until his hands touched the edge of the bed. Harry had tried, but the bed was wider than he'd thought and he couldn't make it.

Malfoy taunted him about that as he rode him, as he plunged in until Harry heard the sound of their arses squeaking together.

"You're _small_ , aren't you, Potter? All that strength everyone thinks you have, and your body really is big enough to hold it after all. You're _small_."

Harry came up with a response to that, too, hard as it was when both his brain and his arse felt liquefied. "Well, that should make me tighter."

Malfoy froze, staring at him, eyes with white visible all the way around. Then he plunged in, groaning, and held himself there as he _bathed_ Harry's insides.

Harry let out a tired chuckle and reached down to wank himself. Malfoy pinned his wrist down on the bed again and took all his control away.

"You come riding me or not at all."

"Like _that's_ going to happen—" Harry began, and then felt Malfoy firming up inside him. He gasped and shifted around until he thought he could plunge down on Malfoy and really get pressure right where he wanted it.

"Yeah," said Malfoy, and watched Harry for a few seconds with his eyelids lowered as Harry fucked himself towards completion. Then he smiled. "Did I mention the potion works faster for the one topping?"

"You didn't. It's like you, though."

Harry let words go after that, chasing his pleasure so hard that his thighs were quivering, and Malfoy let him do it. Harry slumped back when he was done, panting, and then Malfoy began to fuck him again, and Harry cried out from the pain and the fear that Malfoy would stop.

* * *

It was amazing.

They did it one last time in a chair that Harry hadn't even seen when Malfoy first brought him into his bedroom. There had only been the bed, and the man behind him kissing him and shoving Harry towards it.

Now, though, as Harry bobbed slowly on Malfoy's cock and hissed as he came down from the ache inside his arse, he had time to look around. Malfoy had a few pictures on the walls, although most of the room was too dim for Harry to see much. Malfoy seemed to prefer the firelight at the level it was inside Jacob's at Sunset, with the smoldering flames barely pouring out more shine than shadow.

One of them had a sort of pale blob in the center. Harry had fucked up and down three times before he realized that it was meant to be a skull. He stared.

"Am I _boring_ you?"

Malfoy reached up and twisted his right nipple. Harry cried out and ducked his head, and let the skull fade into the darkness behind his eyelids. "No," he whispered. "But you have interesting tastes in painting." He decided he would speak up and risk the chance that it would get Malfoy upset. "Like you do in partners."

There was a little silence with Malfoy flexing his thighs under Harry, helping more than he had been so far. Then he said, "I like to keep things around me to remind me of my weaknesses. That painting reminds me that I'll still die someday, no matter what I try. So I have to work twice as hard while I'm still here."

"And me? What kind of weakness do I prove to you?"

Malfoy twisted Harry part of the way around, not moving at all himself, which made Harry wince from the pain in his neck. Malfoy didn't seem to have noticed the movement, with the intensity he used to stare at Harry's eyes.

"None, now that I have you," Malfoy hissed, and opened Harry's mouth with his tongue.

Harry sagged back and let him. It hurt to come, and still he let Malfoy make him.

* * *

Harry opened his eyes to pain. He grimaced and lay still, then shifted a little from side to side. There was the pain in his arse where Malfoy had taken him, and sprains in his wrist and neck, and roughness from where Malfoy had lain there twisting his nipples—for maybe twenty minutes after the potion had finally worn off—and some more miscellaneous aches that Harry thought were probably the potion itself.

And there was the problem of what came after.

Harry turned his head. Malfoy was beside him in bed, but not asleep, although Harry thought he'd heard him breathing in sleep when he first woke up, himself. Malfoy had his hand spread out flat beneath his chin, and he was watching Harry.

Harry swallowed some air and sat up. "Do you want me to leave?" he asked.

"You don't understand."

Malfoy's voice was more normal than it had been last night, the same way the room looked more normal with the sunlight coming in around the blinds and under the crack beneath the door. Harry shook his head.

"I said I wanted you around to remind me of weaknesses," Malfoy said, and sat up. He had long red scratches down his chest that Harry didn't remember giving him at all. Malfoy saw him giving them a startled glance, and smiled lazily. "But I also said I didn't have them when I had you. You remember?"

Their conversation in the chair. Harry nodded. "But—"

"But?" Malfoy waited. Harry had to find the words.

"I thought you would be satisfied with having me sometimes. That would mean we'd be fucking but I'd still be leaving in the morning."

"Not sometimes," Malfoy said at once. " _Always_."

He kissed Harry, although they both winced back a second later because of their mouths. Malfoy went on speaking, licking up a small trickle of blood where his lip had dried and cracked.

"There's another side to this fantasy. The one where you know me like I know you. And I teach you telepathic magic so you can also read _my_ mind. And you kiss me when we're not in bed, too." There was a barely perceptible hesitation. "And you call me Draco."

Harry felt another stirring and coiling of powerful tension in the bottom of his stomach. He didn't bother hiding his smile as he leaned up and kissed Malfoy again.

It was beyond wonderful to be desired and needed and wanted. But it was also wonderful to be able to desire and need and want back, and to have both at once.

"I can do that, Draco," he whispered, and saw the same molten passion dawn behind Draco's eyes in the second before Draco bore him to the bed.

 _I can do that. I can more than happily do that. All of it. All of him._

 **The End.**


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